With the expiration of the current federal highway bill in a few months, the infrastructure issue is heating up. Newspapers are ginning up interest with stories about deficient and falling down bridges.

Frequent stories in the Washington Post describe failures in federal management and programs. There are also frequent stories about efforts to further centralize power in Washington. The ambitions are endless, even though the failures keep piling up.

A new Rasmussen poll finds that just 19 percent of voters think that the federal government “does the right thing nearly all the time.” The poll also finds that two-thirds of voters think that the government “looks out primarily for its own interests.”

Did you know that the White House has a fleet of 19 helicopters? The Washington Post today discusses efforts to replace this fleet of aging Sikorsky’s with 21 new vehicles yet to be procured. The fleet is used by the president, vice president, and cabinet secretaries.

In February, I highlighted the Department of Energy’s issuance of a $6.5 billion loan guarantee to build a nuclear power facility in Georgia. At the time, the project was behind schedule with cost overruns, and the project’s owners had already secured private financing. Yet DOE issued the loan guarantee anyway.

The battle between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) might be viewed as an overly aggressive federal bureaucracy enforcing misguided environmental regulations vs. an oppressed individual and his overly enthusiastic supporters with guns.